Sussing out airgun laws in African countries?

[MatthewVanitas]

Still living overseas (Portugal) right now, and waiting for word as to whether the company I'm with has a consulting gig for me in Liberia or no. I've been pondering what to do for hobbies when I get down there, and then thought that since I want to shoot steel silhouette games when I get back to the US, maybe it would be a good time to get an air pistol and do the reduced-range airgun IHMSA.

But as I thought about this, the idea occurred to me that I have no idea what airgun laws are in Liberia. Some brief googling points out that laws vary really widely in the rest of the world, with some countries treating airguns full-on as firearms, and others having basically no adult restrictions for ones under a certain caliber and level of power.

If I was interested in setting up an IHMSA silhouette airgun range in the courtyard of the company house (and the company owner is an ex-jarhead, so I think he'd be cool with it so long as it's not blatantly illegal), which would be the smartest way to go:

1) Forget it, err on the side of most caution, get a dartboard and some custom dart components and work on that instead. Rule the pub matches when I return to the US or Europe.

2) Go to a lawyer in Monrovia and pay him $50 or whatever the hourly rate is to dig up me up the clear rules on airguns in Liberia. I know their gun laws are pretty strict in the last decade since they're coming out of multiple civil wars, but no idea on airgun. Interestingly enough, when they put in place strict gun laws, they explicitly exempted traditional smoothbore flintlocks, presumably because they're popular and used for hunting in the bush. Alternative, do basically the same but ask at city hall for them to pull up the ordinance for me.

3) Go to whatever the main police station for that part of the city is, ask what kind of processing fee I need to pay to get a signed letter from the commander saying that I'm totally fine to own a Crossman .177 PCP air pistol, and if anybody asks just present that.

4) Just get one sent over via FPO mail, keep it always at the housing compound and never take it anywhere else until I mail it home, and figure the odds of anybody calling me out on it are awfully low.

I remember years and years ago I had a similar thread on THR asking about alternative sports (darts, blowgun, etc) to take up when in countries that frown on gun use, but danged if I can find it now.

 

[Thermactor]

Um, I think you'd be kicking a hornet's nest in a place like that.

 

[BLB68]

Best to find out what their power level limit is, if any. If that involves paying up a lawyer, it's probably a lot cheaper in the long run than running afoul of the law there. OTOH, some of the most accurate target airguns are pretty miniscule in power, so if they're allowed with a low power limit, that shouldn't be too much of an inconvenience.

 

[hso]

Why not ask the U.S. Embassy for the information?

 

[MatthewVanitas]

Why not ask the U.S. Embassy for the information?

While worth trying out, I'm almost positive their response is going to be along the lines of "you must follow local laws and it's your responsibility to figure those out". If nothing else, just for liability purposes I'd imagine they're loath to make any definitive statements about another country's law.

Though the embassy might be a good place to get recommendations on lawyers, since I know in a number of places embassies will provide recommendations on hospitals that meet higher standards, etc.

 

[hso]

Matthew,

Your assumption might be correct, but it hasn't been the case in my limited experience when asking about knife carry.

 

[MatthewVanitas]

Interesting gouge, hso, I'll have to give the embassy a shot.

What put me in mind to look at is more closely was an anecdote from a guy on anothe forum. He was living with his family on a foreign professional enclave in Saudi, and got his kid a small beginner bow to teach her archery. Only to be warned by other expats that the Saudis took any kind of weapon ownership by foreigners very seriously and her best destroy the bow as soon as possible.

I briefly considered taking up archery if our compound in Liberia is large enough, but then again archery is a pretty serious discipline with a very different skill set. So back to darts.

If air guns turn out to be verboten, my fallback is darts, same as I was in the military. I'd imagine that airguns would likely have been forbidden on deployments, as too much of a nuisance (I vaguely recall guys having wrist-rocket slingshots confiscated for the same reason).

Anecdotally, once I was delivering a bunch of confiscated-from-insurgents rifles to a base that was recycling them to arm pro-US local security forces. While digging up rifles, I found a break action air rifle and brought it too, on a lark. As soon as the captain found out, he ordered it destroyed, since he trusted the Marines to clean and inspect AKs and Dragunovs responsibly, but was sure that if given an air rifle, somebody would put someone's eye out within hours. He may have guessed right, since in the brief period before he saw the air rifle, already Marines had taken pliers to cut the ball heads off pushpins so they could shoot it in the TOC (HQ).

 

[hso]

One thing you'll have to explain to them is the caliber and velocity is typical Olympic airgun level of what you want instead of hunting.

There are airguns common enough in Europe that are powerful enough to humanely kill small game like rabbits shooting much larger caliber than we commonly think of. The Airgun forum here can't answer this question, but it can provide more info on what the technology has become.

 

[MatthewVanitas]

Maybe "Olympic type BB gun" might be a low-profile way to describe it? Technically pellet gun, but same-same for non-shooters. Just wish there was a term for them that didn't have "gun" in it, to be even more diplomatic.

Those paintballs to gear manufacturers got awfully clever in making "paintball marker" the accepted term for their devices...

 

[Thermactor]

If they are super strict about everything including air guns and BB guns, and bows & arrows, and throwing darts, but you still want to keep your target skills up, maybe you can throw spears. There can't be a law against that.

 

[hso]

Tell them that you want to keep in training for the 10m air rifle competition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_metre_air_rifle

 

[MatthewVanitas]

I googled up the actual current main gun legislation in Liberia, "Executive Order No. 6" of 2006. It pretty explicitly says "firearms", but it doesn't clearly indicate whether airguns would not be firearms, since the definition of firearms doesn't say anything about combustibles or whatnot.

NOW, THEREFORE, with the intention of achieving a firearms-free Liberia, until such time as the security situation may permit the introduction of an appropriate and effective firearms registration system for privately held firearms and ammunition, it is hereby ordered as follows:

1. That for the purposes of this Order, the term “firearm” includes all arms of precision and includes flintlock guns with unrifled barrels and shotguns, except for single barrels guns which shall be used primarily for hunting; and that such guns shall be registered with the Ministry of Justice through the Superintendent of the County.
...
4.That the provisions of the Firearm Traffic Act 1956 in respect of the registration or possession of privately owned firearms are hereby suspended.

So basically in Liberia, there's now zero legal private ownership of firearms except for single-shot firearms. Previously you could own other things, but had to register than, and afaiu single-shot flintlocks were exempt. I do find it pretty interesting though that the opening states they plan to have firearms registration again in the future once the situation calms down and they can develop a system. Of course, in the meantime, they have probably tens of thousands of full-auto AKs, assorted weird old obsolete milsurp, and RPGs and other heavy weapons floating around, so that's got to make for interesting policing.

So yep, probably won't get anything conclusive until I get down there, get settled in, and can make inquiries locally.

If they are super strict about everything including air guns and BB guns, and bows & arrows, and throwing darts, but you still want to keep your target skills up, maybe you can throw spears. There can't be a law against that.

I'm pretty sure you meant this as a (possibly tasteless) joke, but I can't imagine any country prohibits darts, outside of environments like airports, courthouses, and prisons. I could totally see spears being illegal in some countries though if they're still used for communal/militia violence. If enough guys get speared, I'm sure at some point the local authorities say "that does it, no more carrying spears around without a good reason". I'm sure there are indigenous areas in South America, probably some rural areas of Southeast Asia and of Subsaharan Africa where a spear is still a popular choice as a personal weapon.

 

[Thermactor]

No, I'm reaching for things you can do. If you haven't noticed, the javelin throw is an Olympic sport. Archery is an olympic sport too. And the gun sports of course too but you know that Liberia has gone fully stupid on gun laws.

 

[hso]

Matthew,

I'm pretty sure you can get single shot air rifles that have to be loaded manually each time thereby fitting into that single shot rule.
http://www.topairgun.com/product/PY-1925

I'm reaching

Certainly.